Jury finds Android did not infringe Oracle patents

The jury in the Oracle v. Google case has found that Android does not infringe on the eight claims concerning two patents (RE38,104 and 6,061,520) Oracle owns. Judge Alsup has dismissed the jury, and after a long trial they are now finished in their part of the proceedings. Now, the real work for Judge Alsup begins.

The last verdict, in which the jury found that Android did infringe on the structure, sequence, and organization (SSO) of 37 Java APIs, still needs some attention, as the jury could not agree if these should be covered under fair-use rules, so Judge Alsup will have to determine that. There were also two minor infringements found in the rangeCheck code and the eight Java test files that were inadvertently included in early releases of Android.

Should Judge Alsup find that the SSO of the Java APIs is not copyrightable, Oracle will receive damages for the rangeCheck file and test files, to a maximum of $150,000 each. If the SSO portions are found to be copyrightable, all three infringements will go to a new trial to determine damages. Of course, we fully expect Oracle to appeal every decision it can, in front of any court that will listen.

In the end, it looks like Oracle won't be getting the billions of dollars they wanted, and more importantly, won't be eligible for any injunctive relief. There will be no "Oracle Tax" like we see from Microsoft after they went after OEMs (and suspiciously won't fight Google), and Oracle will have to find another way to make money in the changing tech world.

While it looks like a major victory for Google (though things aren't yet finished), we still have to pay for million dollar trials, and someone has to pay the legal fees on both sides. Google may have won today, but make no mistake -- our wallet lost. Until the software patent situation is revamped, the only real winners are lawyers.